deja vu all over again

Without rehashing too much old news, our home was hit by a tornado last March 12. Pretty frightening and something no one should experience more than once - if at all!

We moved later that same month but not because of the tornado. The move was already in the works. Several weeks after the storm, severe weather came around again in the area of our new home. It was another fit-ful evening huddled in the bathroom listening to the TV audio from another room. But while apparently tornados came close to our area, we were spared anything more than a brief power outage (I think we lost power) and lots of rain.

Since then we have looked for storm shelters and have found some that fit the bill but that's just it. The bill is too high - for now at least.

Last night or rather early this morning about 4 a.m. my oldest daughter wakes us up to tell us severe weather is moving in once again (a spring ritual for southwest Missouri). By the time I can really make much sense of anything other than it is really raining and windy, I sort of stumble to the bathroom which is already full of people; little ones that is. Seems my daughter had gotten everyone in there with pillows and quilts and stuff. They were quietly sitting on the floor. My wife and I began to move back and forth from the radio to the TV trying to follow the latest weather updates.

For about 30 minutes it was touch and go. The radio folks said "if you live in Everton (we do) you need to take shelter immediately" as a major storm was moving right toward us. I still recall following the path of the March 12, 2006 storm as the projections about where it would hit had us in the crosshairs. The TV today had a home shopping thing on with little maps off to one side showing who was in tornado watch, tornado warning, flash flood, severe thunderstorm etc.

Within minutes - but very fretful ones I must say, the forecasts changed, our warning was cancelled and we were out of any imminent danger.

At 4:30 a.m. we heard another warning; this time for Springfield so we called our daughter who lives in an apt. in town - woke her up to tell her that things were turning badly weatherwise. She could hear the sirens and said she'd go to the basement of her building.

We all tried to go back to sleep and surprisingly, all three younger kids fell back asleep without much fuss or bother. I was proud of the way they handled it. Maybe they were simply too tired and groggy and never really woke up enough to realize what was going on.

Not so easy for me. I'll bet I lay in bed - wide awake for at least a 1/2 hour before finally waking back up to my 5:30 a.m. alarm.

Nothing much of substance here except to say that I think we will never completely get over a fear (healthy to some degree I hope) of bad weather. I remember as a kid living just south of what was called tornado alley in Texas and during the violent weather season, weathermen (yep they were all men in those dark days of the 50s) talked about squall lines. For some reason that word still takes me back to those times as a child. I'm not even sure what a squall line is and if meteorologists even use that term anymore. I also vividly remember hiding behind a couch in 1956 or 57 while our mailman (yep they called them that back then - not letter carriers) was on the phone with his wife. They lived a few miles west of us and were right in the path of a tornado raging through Dallas. It was amazing in that it basically travelled right down the middle of a street for several miles. Houses on both sides were damaged, power lines down etc. but two blocks away you'd never know there had been a tornado (except for debris and stuff on the ground).

All this to say that since age 4, tornados have been a part of my life - a scary part. And I don't think they are the kind of thing you can forget.